Japanese impressions, with a note on ConfuciusTranslated from the French by Frances Rumsey; with a prefby Anatole France . she isplaced at the single point of intersection betweenAsia and Europe. It was essentially in Japan thatsuch men of the newer culture could appear asLafcadio Hearn, Hall Chamberlain, Okakura Kakuzo ;men who have in their thought united Asiatic toOccidental culture and in whom there has developedthe consciousness of a unique humanity. If Europeis to continue an upward march, it will be moreand more vitally European by this extension ofconsciousness, and we shall even see B
Japanese impressions, with a note on ConfuciusTranslated from the French by Frances Rumsey; with a prefby Anatole France . she isplaced at the single point of intersection betweenAsia and Europe. It was essentially in Japan thatsuch men of the newer culture could appear asLafcadio Hearn, Hall Chamberlain, Okakura Kakuzo ;men who have in their thought united Asiatic toOccidental culture and in whom there has developedthe consciousness of a unique humanity. If Europeis to continue an upward march, it will be moreand more vitally European by this extension ofconsciousness, and we shall even see Buddhisticecstasy and Confucian wisdom distilled into theChristian liturgy. But if Europe is to founder innew cataclysms, it will save from the wreck onlywhat is in its present limited capacity to save;and the best of our thoughts would survive as theyare now repeated, in fine ideograms, on silken the sacred hills of Kyoto, even more than fromthose of Rome, the avenues of a new world reachto the infinite ; and from their summits one divines,as from the prow of a ship, the new horizon. THE JAPANESE QUALITY. THE JAPANESE QUALITY HE most remarkable event of theyears which immediately precededthe European War was the entranceof Japan into the rank of the greatpowers. We give this term, not tothose nations which are the mosthighly civilized but to those which,in event of war, are most to be feared. Japan hasproved to China, to Russia and to Germany that sheis possessed of a redoubtable strength; and, nowthat we recognize her power, we consent to speakof her otherwise than in the phrases of Lotis amusedand slightly disdainful curiosity. M. Motono,former Minister of Japan in Paris, once put it witha penetration in which there was an element ofsadness: As long as we consecrated ourselves to thework of an intensive civilization, as long as we pro-duced only men of letters, men of knowledge andartists, you treated us as barbarians. Now that wehave learned to kill, you call us
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectconfucius, bookyear19
